Hello and buona sera from Cortina, Italy, everyone.
Happy Thursday, everyone.
Happy Friday Eve.
I learned a new Italian phrase today.
Mamma mia, che buono.
Oh my goodness, how good.
Real good.
I'm Coy Wire.
Hope you're having an awesome day.
Let's get you your news.
This week marks the start of a very special time for one of the world's largest religions.
On Tuesday evening, many Muslims around the world kicked off Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic calendar.
So Ramadan Mubarak or blessed Ramadan to all of you who celebrate.
During this holy month, more than two billion Muslims around the world will fast from sunrise to sunset each day, abstaining from food and water as an act of worship and self-discipline.
The Ramadan fast is one of the five pillars of Islam and it's broken each evening with a communal meal known as iftar, where family and friends come together to eat and pray.
Ramadan doesn't fall on the same day every year.
Rather, it follows the sighting of a new crescent moon during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.
This sometimes means that different countries around the world will observe its start on different days.
And if you're feeling like this week has been chock full of holidays, you are not imagining things.
This year, Ramadan shared the calendar with not one, but two other major events.
The Lunar New Year, which we told you about earlier this week, and Fat Tuesday, which marks the end of Mardi Gras and ushers in the Christian season of Lent.
Now to some golden moments from here at the Winter Olympics in Italy.
Norwegian skier Johannes Husflot Klebo had already become the most successful Winter Olympian of all time earlier this week, but he was not done.
The powerhouse added another gold medal to his resume, winning the men's cross country team sprint.
It's his fifth gold medal of these games alone and the 10th of his career.
There's simply Norway could match that.
And in the skies over Cortina, it is a bird.
It's a plane.
No, it's a pair of gravity-defying gold medals for Team China.
Zhu Mengtao defended her 2022 aerial skiing gold medal, becoming the first athlete ever to win multiple golds in an aerial event, and snowboarder su ying ming clinched gold in men's slope style on his 22nd birthday.
Talk about a perfect present.
But maybe the biggest headline of the day a golden comeback for team usa's michaela shifford.
She conquered the women's slalom in sensational style to take home her first olympic gold medal in eight years first medal of any kind.
Rather, After winning gold at just 18 years old in the 2014 games, Schifrin missed the podium the last two games.
Now she's found her way back to the top, showing why she is winningest alpine skier of all time.
Speaking of golden moments, I got the chance to catch up with Schifrin's teammate Breezy Johnson.
Johnson not only won her first career gold medal at these games, she also got engaged.
But reaching this surreal stage of her career was far from a breeze.
Here's what she told me about how she's handled all the adversity along the way.
Downhill skiing is often called the most dangerous event at the Winter Games.
If fear had a voice at the top of the course, what would you say back to it?
I always say that fear has to come with you.
You can't kick it out of the car.
You just put it in the back seat.
Ski racing careers, they're full of highlights.
They're also full of setbacks.
You missed the Beijing Olympics due to an injury.
What has adversity taught you that maybe winning never could?
Yeah, I mean it's interesting because yeah, people are often jealous of the amazing moments, the wins at the Olympics, the world championships.
But rarely are people jealous of the path that it took to get you there.
I think you really have to find joy and meaning in those hard moments.
You know, being brave enough to try at something that many people just aren't willing to take the risk to do.
To fail at is what I find meaning in.
And, you know, it keeps me going in those tough moments and is, to me, the real accomplishment.
If you said Shanghai, ding, ding, you're correct.
With a population of about 24 to 25 million people.
It is also home to the world's longest metro system.
China saw an increase in new marriages last year after introducing incentives to encourage couples to wed.
It's all part of Beijing's plan to reverse its declining birth rate, a decade after the government ended its one-child policy.
CNN's Simone McCarthy explains the reasons behind the uptick.
China changed one rule and saw a major rise in marriages last year.
Marriage registries across the country, including the one behind me here in Beijing, have seen a lot of bookings.
China's government is pushing hard to encourage more young people to get married as Beijing tries to reverse a declining birth rate that could hurt its economy.
Last year, Chinese officials made a major change.
For the first time, people can get married anywhere in the country.
That means couples living in major cities don't have to return to their hometowns and can even choose any destination for their marriage.
We are working in Beijing.
It's really convenient.
We don't have to go back to our hometown.
Right here, where we work, we are able to complete all the procedures.
And there are signs that's paying off.
China last year recorded 6.76 million marriages.
That's 650,000 more than the previous year when marriages hit a record low.
Now, marriages have generally declined over the past decade and the 2025 numbers are still less than just a couple years ago.
Young people typically say that economic strain, as well as wanting to focus on their career and independence, are reasons to delay or avoid getting married altogether.
A lot of stress because of things like work and family.
But getting married, that's something two people, if they're meant to be or like each other, they'll surely get married.
Next up Lego to a competition that had elementary and middle school teams stacking up solutions and clicking robots into motion using Legos.
And we were there as everything came together piece by piece.
Check it out.
It's the moment these young engineers have worked for.
Let's try one more time.
Months of calculations, coding and collaboration prepared teams of elementary and middle school students to compete at the annual FIRST LEGO League State Championship at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
This is like their Super Bowl of robotics.
It's a lot of time to STEM science technology, engineering and math because your students are doing some problem solving and innovating.
They have to come up with some unique ways to try to solve that problem.
Each team carefully created robots out of Legos that compete in intricate and timed missions inspired by this year's archaeological theme Unearthed.
What we do is we program our robots to do all the missions on the table and then the more missions you do, the more points you get, and we're excited for the.
In the judging room, teams explain their designs and coding decisions with creative presentations.
This year is our largest state championship we've ever had.
We went from 24 teams to 60 teams.
What might look like simple Lego bricks are actually the building blocks for engineering and leadership training.
These are specialized robotics kits that are allowing the students to really dive deeply into some of those important skills that we see are going to be needed in the workforce today, like coding, mechanical engineering, but more importantly, arguably than that, is what we call core values.
Teaching that teamwork, teaching leadership.
You'll see a student or a team that's really struggling.
Another team will come up and they'll help them.
Every team is unique.
Our robot is named R67 because we thought it was really funny.
We have spunky pinkies rocking custom outfits, team names and catchphrases while they present their projects how to persevere and how to continue and how to grow.
These students not only build robots and code, they also are tasked with creating solutions for real world problems.
We were talking about mobility issues and people who have hand tremors and stuff and how those people don't always feel like they can follow their dreams of being an archaeologist.
And they said, well, why don't we solve that problem?
And so they've actually done a ton of research and they've developed a glove that actually we've proven reduces tremor.
For some teams, this state championship is just the next step.
The top performers will move on to the international competitions.
The points may stack up on the board, but the skills, they stack up for life.
Definitely the ability to like kind of communicate with others and like cooperation and be able to like go out and present ideas to others and to like connect with others.
It feels like a superpower, honestly.
Being able to learn something like this so young, it's a gift.
Today's story getting a 10 out of 10.
Londoners combining two of my very favorite things, competition and food.
Feast your eyes on the annual pancake race.
In full costume, they sprint through London frying pans in hand, stopping only to flip a flapjack and then keep on running.
It marks Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, marking the last indulgent hurrah before Lent begins.
Some spectators come for the competition, others just for the carbs.
Winners go home with trophies and frying pans, presumably also full of pride and pancakes.
Hey, what's a panda used to make pancakes?
A panda?
Time for some two shout-outs today.
First one's going to Janesville, Wisconsin.
Miss Nelson at Craig High School, thank you for following us on our CNN 10 Instagram.
And this one goes to Miss Man Select Grant Middle School in Fairview Heights, Illinois.
Rise up and mamma mia, que bueno.
See you tomorrow from Cortina, Illinois.
I'm Coy Wire.
We are CNN 10.
Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper.
On my podcast, All There Is, we explore grief and loss in all its complexities.
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But one of the greatest gifts in my life is the fact that my entire existence and my childhood, growing up with dad, was all captured on camera.
I mean, it is all there.
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